The sea (this being, after all, the centenary of Debussy’s
La mer), fairy tales and the end of the Second World
War are the themes of this years Proms, announced at last night’s
Tate Britain press launch for the forthcoming season. Opening
on 15th July, with the first part of the first night of the Proms
being broadcast on BBC 1 for the very first time, there are 74
Albert Hall concerts, 8 chamber music concerts and new attractions
which symbolize the Proms embracing the digital and media age.
Key amongst them is a much wider TV broadcast schedule –
with both the first week’s and, for the first time, the
last week’s concerts being televised in full – a fully
interactive TV service with digital programme notes and a WAP
listings and information service. A new Proms Films initiative
– including the broadcast of James Kent’s Holocaust:
A Musical Memorial Film (preceding a performance of Gorecki’s
Symphony of Sorrowful Songs), The Red Violin,
with a concert a couple of days before given by Joshua Bell playing
the concerto inspired by the film, and Simon Cellan Jones’
Eroica (linked to Sir Colin Davis’ LSO performance
of the symphony) head an all-embracing list of wider Proms extras
aimed at broadening the festival’s appeal. As usual, all
Proms will be broadcast live on both BBC Radio 3 as well as the
Internet – with most concerts (previously this was only
limited to a small selection) being available online for on-demand
listening for seven days.

That broadening of the audience (up to 86.5% paid attendance in
2004 against 84% the previous year) is seen as a crucial element
of Nick Kenyon’s policy of widening interest in classical
music. There will be a new ticket scheme, BBC Music Intro, sponsored
by Lloyd’s TSB which will provide substantially discounted
tickets and workshop places to BBC Proms and under-16s will enjoy
half-price ticket prices for every Prom. Last year’s ticket
sales of 275,000 should be exceeded this year if the initiative
works in the way it should. Violins!! – a learning project
– will take place throughout Saturday 30th July and brings
together world-class professional players (notably Viktoria Mullova)
with aspiring young musicians.

First and foremost, however, the Proms is about music and there
are notable Prom debuts from both Placido Domingo (singing Siegmund
in the Covent Garden Walküre - itself a Prom premiere
in this complete three act performance) and Ravi Shankar. Unusually,
the BBC Symphony Orchestra will be without a Principal Conductor
for this season (with Jiri Belohlavek taking up his post with
the orchestra just ahead of the 2006 Proms season) so a series
of guest conductors will lead the orchestra’s thirteen concerts.
The First Night will be conducted by that iconoclast of British
music, Sir Roger Norrington, in a performance of Tippett’s
A Child of our Time (Tippett being one of the composers celebrated
this year), and the Last Night, in all its tribal glory, will
be conducted by English National Opera’s departing music
director, Paul Daniel. Visiting orchestras will include The Cleveland
Orchestra (the issue of broadcast rights having now been settled)
in two concerts – Mahler’s Third and Beethoven’s
Missa Solemnis - and the Vienna Philharmonic will do
two concerts in the final week, Bruckner’s Eighth under
Eschenbach and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring under
Zubin Mehta. Maris Jansons brings his Concertgebouw Orchestra
to the Albert Hall for two concerts, one of which will include
a performance of Mahler’s Sixth. Notable for his absence
is Sir Simon Rattle.

New music continues to be an important part of the Proms and this
year there are 10 major new commissions or co-commissions from
British and international composers. Further premieres of 10 living
composers are being heard for the first time across the season
and a number of key works never heard at the Proms before make
their debut, including Liszt’s A Faust Symphony
(in its original version), Wagner’s Die Walküre,
Handel’s Julius Caesar, and Vaughan Williams’
A London Symphony (in its original version). BBC commissions
include Michael Berkeley’s Concerto for Orchestra,
James MacMillan’s A Scotch Bestiary, Fraser Trainer’s
Violin Concerto (premiered by Viktoria Mullova), Bent Sorensen’s
The Little Mermaid and a new work by Esa-Pekka Salonen
(as yet untitled), to be played by Valery Gergiev and his World
Orchestra for Peace. Thomas Ades’ Violin Concerto (played
by Anthony Marwood) will receive its UK premiere, as will Corigliano’s
Violin Concerto, The Red Violin, played by the man for
whom it was written, Joshua Bell.

Chamber music will play an important role again, but the lunchtime
concerts will now move to the larger space of Cadogan Hall rather
than the Victoria & Albert Musuem. Costing £8 million
to mount, the Proms remains one of the great music festivals and
this year’s concerts offer some refreshing and radical departures
from recent years. Full details go online on 27th April and can
be seen at www.bbc.co.uk/proms.